


Eau de Vie

by the_wretching



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:47:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5412236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wretching/pseuds/the_wretching
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Illya and Napoleon are apart on Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eau de Vie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elise_Madrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elise_Madrid/gifts).



December 24, 1965 9:14pm   
New York

I've been “benched” as Napoleon would say. Though this is some kind of sports reference and I have never yet known Napoleon to watch or even discuss sporting events. 

You blow up one wrong satrapy... Well, perhaps Waverly knows I am not sentimental about Christmas, and so will not mind having the week to myself. The city is all festooned with innumerable garlands and shiny trinkets. I can't say I am much for the horrors of this capitalist take on a supposed holy day, yet the brightness in the eyes of the children, the flush on the cheeks of the housewives heading into and out of the shops, is mildly infectious. And I cannot say I did not return a few of the gay passersby on my way back from the market tonight a Happy Christmas. They had such friendly and hopeful countenances. Besides, the weather too has warmed a bit with some of last weekend's snow finally giving way to puddles. 

I spent the day in the gymnasium at HQ. The Americans use Christmas as a ready excuse to let their physical training slide-- even the most devoted athletes among our agents. And the few other foreign agents in New York were either on assignment or else only popped in quietly and respected my concentration as I pleasantly practiced some T'ai Chi in the unaccustomed quiet. It was so perfectly solitary that I lost myself to it quite thoroughly and only realized, in the showers, that I had been at it for nearly three hours.

Waverly dismissed me yesterday evening with an unpracticed smile and a rather large bottle of cognac. Again I must observe that Christmas in America has the most remarkable effect on her residents. Nevertheless, my evening unfolds happily with a nourished and exercised body and mind, the light of the full moon, some records, this writing, and my warm bottle of “holiday cheer.”

***

December 24, 1965 6:30pm   
Leningrad.

Preformed the recon without much trouble. Reported to Moscow HQ. Paperwork up to date and now the snow is falling too fast and heavy to make further efforts worthwhile.

I've returned to my hotel room for the evening. Had dinner. Despite the sun being well set here, the snow cover illuminates the city in that charming way it does. The sky glows white as it hammers down ever more snow. The wind is relentless and I am happy to be in for the night. Found a bottle of very tolerable cognac around the corner. Most westerners don't realize how popular it is in the USSR. Still, there is no hustle nor bustle on this Western Christmas eve; no decked out trees, strung lights, or frantic shoppers. The stillness vaguely unsettles my New York soul, even if it is just capitalist bias talking. But I'm not sure it is. I'd say, more than the trappings themselves, I'm lonesome for the feeling of fraternity that such evoke on Christmas Eve in Manhattan.

And nothing quite hones that lonesome for a Western Christmas feeling as the pensive isolation of a heavy snowfall. There isn't much that is nicer, really, than a bottle of cognac in a foreign hotel room with no obligations for the night and a full blizzard outside. And Leningrad is a good city for savoring loneliness.

The cognac reminds me of last winter in Paris following that affair in Cognac. With Illya.

Here and there in Leningrad, I've sworn I've heard his voice, or seen his figure disappearing around a corner. Just the accent I suppose. And a Russian sort of way of carrying oneself. A Russian sort of way of being. In the snow.

***

December 24, 1965 9:45pm   
New York

This bottle quite recalls for me the bottle they gave us on that affair in France last winter. Napoleon's accent is just awful. And he utterly lacked the discipline to let me do most of the speaking on that affair.   
I was mollified when it was all quite under control and we were back in Paris to await our flight to New York on the following afternoon. 

It was cold in our hotel and the twin beds were entirely too close together for me to get any restful sleep as Napoleon was wakeful and his disrupted sleep kept disrupting my own. I eventually sidled into his bed intending that the shared warmth might help us both. It was hardly the first time we had shared such friendliness: Quality field work calls for quality sleep, and despite his name, Solo does not sleep well alone. Napoleon, as usual, took very well to having another body in his bed. In fact, his default sleeping posture is with his arm and leg draped about a sleepmate. He was sleeping soundly almost immediately, an arm heavy on my waist, snoring faintly against my neck. 

I was likewise feeling soothed, with Napoleon's warmth against my back and naturally he'd taken the better of the two mattresses. I was nearly in full sleep when I became aware that I was leaning into that other comfort that was Napoleon's erection hard against my right hindside.

***

December 24, 1965 6:51pm   
Leningrad

Before we left, the distillery had given us a few bottles of one of their nicest reserves. 

After three days camped out in the cellars, Illya and I were both relieved to be back in Paris with some Napoleon grade cognac and a whole night before our return flight to New York.

That is, I was relieved. Illya was just grumpy. He wasn't playing along with my Inspector Javert routine at all. Just kept scowling and grumbling about my accent not fooling anyone. He is adorable when he glowers so, like a pooosy cat indeed. But perhaps I had some bad escargot cause even the cognac didn't quite settle me, and so I turned in early.

During the night I came gradually awake to the delicious warmth of another body under the covers, a body whose soft backside was sliding in slow rhythm against my fully awake groin. It was completely dark in the room. I could hear his breathing, soft but quick, and the feverish warmth of him was so enveloping that I was sure the blanket must have been over my head. It was not, but I shoved it further off us anyway, with which the cool air gave me gooseflesh, as I felt myself start to move against his rhythm. And quicken the pace. Illya had evidently been ready with the lube for without even intending to I'd slipped inside him. The rush of an impossibly silky heat and intoxicating pressure. I was alive with the pleasure of it. Making love to Illya is a whole other state of consciousness. The body is hyper alert while the head swims on electric tendrils of musky vapor.

***

December 24, 1965 10:00pm   
New York

I'm always the most attracted to Napoleon when he's at his most irritating. I have not been able to fully explain this to myself. But he was so insufferable on that affair that I could simply not resist him, especially when his body was against me like that. We play as wolves play. We play at fighting until we are so filled with the adrenaline of animosity that we devour one another and it is ecstasy. I suppose it would not be so sporadically compelling, so infuriatingly satiating, were it not something we pretended never to do.

The mystery, as the say, the subterfuge, denial, secrecy. They might be the most significant factor in its raw power. Some day it might be worth it to try countering this theory. But for now it is best as it is. Our occasional mutual recreation is an emergency salve that we have both come to depend on having in reserve.

Poor Napoleon is missing all this Christmas, and I know how he likes it. I guess it is most fitting then for me to be thinking of him with my cognac while he is who-knows-where on assignment. Thinking of him and remembering falling asleep in his arms, as content as a child after Saint Nicholas has left just what he wanted.

***

December 24, 1965 7:11pm   
Leningrad

Illya came in my mouth after what could only have been thirty seconds and was immediately asleep. 

I pulled the blankets back over us, as I had started to feel the chill in earnest, and I wrapped myself around his body and fell heartily asleep myself to the ebb and flow of his breath. To that Illya sort of way of breathing. In the pitch dark.

I close this record here, this Christmas eve, with a taste and a sting on the tongue of cognac. And nothing more.

**Author's Note:**

> While I did some little bits of research (cognac, t'ai chi in NYC circa 65, Christmas in the USSR, etc), The weather and phase of the moon on that night are my own inventions for the story and prompt. Any historical accuracy on those counts is purely coincidental.


End file.
